Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday September 26, 2013 @07:06AM
from the to-pay-or-not-to-pay dept.

cagraham writes "BitTorrent has released a new file format called Bundle into closed alpha-testing today, according to VentureBeat. The format allows artists to embed a paywall inside of their work, and then distribute the art for free over BitTorrent. When users open the work they can listen or view part it for free, and are then prompted to either pay a fee, turn over their email address, or perhaps share the work over social media, in order to see the rest. The new format may ease artists concerns about releasing work for free and having to hope for compensation in the future. Artists who have already signed on include Madonna, The Pixies, and author Tim Feriss."

Funny how those three little words turn a used idea into something that seems brand new? Unfortunately, 90% of the things we put in the magic cloud were never appropriate for the cloud to begin with. Still amazed the VC crowd hasn't learned that lesson yet.

Bah, these are the risk takers that think beyond your puny limitations. The ones who will get in on the next trillion dollar idea because they dared to dream.The ones who live on daddy's dime and if in any lower economic class would be sitting in a 3rd rate casino somewhere plunking nickles in a slot machine all day...

The honour system. Bittorrent users would never pirate music from independent artists, they only go after labels' output where the economics don't favour the artist or the consumer.

Stop laughing.

You laugh, but to be fair, when things are readily available digitally, piracy does drop off quite a bit.

Yes, there's always going to be cuntrags that bitch -- the whining blubbering mass of entitled manchildren that cry every time Viz shuts down another Naruto / One Piece / Bleach piracy site being the example that immediately comes to mind -- but for the most part, people pirate not because they don't want to pay, it's because they want convenience.

but for the most part, people pirate not because they don't want to pay, it's because they want convenience.

Until shows are released a. free of cost, b. free of DRM, and c. almost immediately available via a simple link, piracy will always be a significant issue. With applications like SickBeard, CouchPotato, and HeadPhones that automatically scour and download content, it's hard to compete against that for convenience.

Haha. Not really.Oh, (a) can play a part, but cheap is good enough. (b) is dumb. No one (statistically speaking) gives a fuck. (c) is the biggest point. Don't believe me? Guess how much my bit torrent use has fallen off since I got a roku and netflix account? I think that Gravity Falls and Game of Thrones are about the only things I bothered hitting torrent up for. So yeah, point c is valid, but the other two are plain wrong.

You have mistaken giving a fuck out of principle for giving a fuck out of annoyance.

I have quite a few gamer friends. Most of them couldn't give the least damn about the ethics or long term implications of DRM in games. Every single one of them understands what it means when they can't play (for example) a single-player game offline on their laptop in a waiting room or on a plane. And the majority (sometimes with a bit of help, admittedly) of them have "fixed" those problems by grabbing a crack off the internet.

So no, most people have no idea they should oppose DRM. Despite that, most people do hate everything about it without even knowing the target of their ire.

Piracy isn't a problem. The people who have money and genuinely enjoyed a pirated product will pay for it, if even just for pride or boasting rights. The people who don't have money and the people who didn't like the product wouldn't have paid anyway and therefore don't count as lost sales.

But in the past couple years I've completely stopped pirating music. Why? Well, if I can get a guaranteed high-quality, DRM-free copy of the album in ten seconds for $5, why would I bother spending more time to pirate a copy of unknown quality? Particularly considering how hard to find much of the music I listen to is -- you can find it on Amazon, but it's not on TPB, not on GNUtella, not on slsk, often not even on iTunes...

I'd use Netflix if I could use it the way I wanted -- i.e., integrate it into my custom home theater system. But until Netflix will run on a Raspberry Pi, I'm going to be pirating my movies and TV shows. Of course, the ones that offer a paid download option (or even a donations appreciated download option) get my money. As for video games -- those I usually pirate just because I can't find them anymore. Pirated a bunch of N64 games because I don't have an N64, you can't find the game cartridges anywhere, and they don't offer those games for sale on the Wii store (the ones they do offer I've already purchased)...so I hacked the Wii and pirated the roms. Trying to do the same for Gamecube games now, for the same reason -- I just can't find the game discs even if I wanted to buy them. Give me a $5/game download option and I'd GLADLY skip the freakin' *weeks* I've spent trying to get the damn pirated copies to work...

I don't want Netflix as it currently exists, that's my point. I don't use XBMC (which is the single slowest media player I've ever seen,) I use omxplayer and some custom PHP and Bash code on a model B Pi. Works great. Plays all my media just fine, kicks on the news as I walk in the door from work, turns the projector and stereo on/off as I start or finish watching something, handles YouTube subscriptions, torrents...Next project is integrating it with my room lighting and gaming systems. It does more than t

Does Viz release these shows in DRM-free downloadable formats? I'd imagine not. So even that one falls under the convenience category.

Only very rarely is media released in DRM-free downloadable formats. Baen Ebooks, Tor/Forge, and Louis CK's shows are the most popular examples I know of, but it is very rare. I can think of no broadcasted or cable television show that allows it.

Does Viz release these shows in DRM-free downloadable formats? I'd imagine not. So even that one falls under the convenience category.

Only very rarely is media released in DRM-free downloadable formats. Baen Ebooks, Tor/Forge, and Louis CK's shows are the most popular examples I know of, but it is very rare. I can think of no broadcasted or cable television show that allows it.

I was actually speaking of the comics, not the cartoons. The great unforgivable sin was that Viz wanted something like $0.25 a chapter and had a 2 week delay (which has since been lowered to same day) release lag. The "pro-piracy" arguments were hilarious, and stupid. [mangafox.me]

I would agree with that...to a point. One thing we have seen over and over in economics is there is a "sweet spot" when it comes to pricing and ease of use and when that sweet spot is ignored then a black market appears to serve those customers you are foolishly ignoring.

Take video games as an example. While of course lower prices equal more sales there is a point where continuing to lower the price doesn't increase sales simply because all of those that want the product have gotten the product by then. Watching game sales that release sales figures here is what I have observed...for indie games the sweet spot seems to be between $2-$5, unless its mobile in which case its a buck. For big name titles it really depends on how niche the game is, for example a Mirror's Edge or a God sim like Populus seem to do best in the $10-$20 price range while something more accessible to a general audience, your Saints Rows and Borderlands seem to do best in the $20-$40 but the SMART publishers go for the lower end of that curve and make up the difference in impulse buy DLC, your costumes in both and expansions in Borderlands.Finally you have those games with a VERY short shelf life, your Call Of Honor: Gears Of Killzone Halo Edition where everybody buys it for the MP which is quickly dead when the next come out and those can sell a huge amount in the $40-$60 range simply because if you don't buy at release when the next title comes out the previous one quickly becomes a ghost town.

But if you ignore those sweet spots then piracy WILL jump off the scale because time and time again we have seen when a large part of the market isn't being served a black market WILL arise to serve those customers. We have seen this in everything from piracy to Chinese knock offs of popular electronics, if the people think the price for a tablet should be between $100-$150 and the big names all push $400 then somebody WILL come along and give all those potential customers what they want.

I think where most industries seriously fuck up is by saying "Oh if you refuse to bend over and give us every cent we think our precious shit is worth (or that we require to pump up our stock price, see the former head of EA saying games should be $100) then you are the evil and should be destroyed" when in reality a black market is simply a signal that you are doing SOMETHING WRONG, your price is too high, your product has ease of use issues, there is something driving your potential customers across the street to the black market, you fix that issue? Watch the money train pull in.

Piracy drops because sharing on torrent is pointless (unless you are a linux distro or some sort of big chunk of data).
In my experience most people don't WANT TO PAY! And that's why 99% of the torrents are breaking copyright rules.
Because an album costs between 15$ and $40 in countries where average salary is $250 and where is $2500 (and gives $1 to the artist). Would you pay like 10% of your montly income for an album?
I'm very sure the way of distributing music will change [theoatmeal.com]

Nobody is laughing. The moment some publishers like Tor started distributing e-books without DRM, there was an increase in e-book sales from these publishers. The Amazon Gateway sort of distorts this a bit, but outside the kindle world (i.e. in the open epub world) it is easier to notice such things.

I don't know, there are definitely better ways than other to do this than others. Spiderweb software actually does this well I think. After something like 20 hours of gameplay you get to a point where you can't go past. You know this ahead of time though. If it's a timed event, that does stink, it's jarring and degrades the product. The key is to make you want to give them the money. Make it an emotional buy and it bypasses the logic filter.

I would imagine that they hold the decryption key on the servers for the pay content, and only send it to you when you fulfill the terms of the bundle. That's not DRM, that's encryption, and it works.

Or they could be stupid. Either way.

Unless that encryption is built into the media players (ie "DRM"), it can obviously only protect the content as far as the first decryption. After that, the content is free from decryption and it can easily be redistributed.

True, but is that really a problem? DRM has, as far as I know, never been successful in preventing pirate versions from being posted. The goal should be that artists get paid, not to have zero piracy. Having an additional way to distribute content which includes payments to the artist will help, if it is convenient enough.

When speaking of torrents, why download the "paywalled" version if the free one is right next to it?

I know I would opt for a paid version; albeit from a different channel. But I just don't see the current bunch of torrent users picking the paywalled version over a pirated. They're often (with exceptions naturally) people who don't care about the ethics and morality concerning intellectual property...

In fact, some of them will go to great lengths defending their position

There is not enough information out there yet to say. I think a lot will depend on how well the client is written and how easy the payment procedure is.

Another question is whether they will insist on people using their client or open up the format for inclusion in third party media players etc.

When speaking of torrents, why download the "paywalled" version if the free one is right next to it?

I know I would opt for a paid version; albeit from a different channel. But I just don't see the current bunch of torrent users picking the paywalled version over a pirated. They're often (with exceptions naturally) people who don't care about the ethics and morality concerning intellectual property...

I don't think these bundles would be very popular on The Pirate Bay, but they could be distributed via the artist's own site or via a store/portal/search engine that only contains these bundles etc. Studies have shown

But buying a key means everybody gets the same key (since they have the same file) or that the decryption is a mix of home brew stuff - and such things are eventually cracked. Especially on the PC.

The only argument I can find against cracking the key system or distributing the key, is the fact thatost likely someone will distribute the decrypted content anyway, so perhaps nobody will take the time to crack the system.

The key distribution system can be secured, since it resides on the server side and the server is in the hands of someone trusted by the rights owner. The key itself cannot be secured, since it is needed on the end user's machine to unlock the content. It could be hidden within the client, but that could be cracked. This comes down to the fundamental problem of DRM: you cannot both let the end user have the content for the purpose of playing it and not have the content for the purpose of copying it.

In that case, why have DRM at all? Simply ask for donations. Since DRM is not effective, people are not going to pay anyway unless they feel like it, so why annoy them and lower your chances? Instead, focus on making as many payment methods available as possible, from credit cards to Paypall to Bitcoin.

Well, the details are sparse. Being that it's bettorrent what we know is that there will be two versions of the content, the secure payload, and the superior ripped version without DRM which is freely available from ThePirateBay.

This is a step back. This will be exploited/cracked/patched to hell and back, especially if the bulk is kept client-side. This is DRM. Every lock is built around the key, nothing is perfectly secure.
I hope it helps the artists though, i know musicians everywhere get fucked severely by the "record companies".

Theoretically (especially for 'release promotion' type stuff, where longevity is not a concern and awful 'analytics' people are probably salivating over the numbers) the plan might call for a server-side component(which would allow both tracking of interested users and allow the bittorrent-distributed component to be incomplete and thus not crackable on its own). That wouldn't stop the trivial redistribution of de-crippled copies once one person takes one for the team and complies with the demands of the pa

If it's partly server side, the file you download after paying can be digitally marked with your identifying information and when thousands of copies of that turn up in the hands of third parties or on a torrent, they can go after the person who paid for it for illegal file sharing.

If it's partly server side, the file you download after paying can be digitally marked with your identifying information and when thousands of copies of that turn up in the hands of third parties or on a torrent, they can go after the person who paid for it for illegal file sharing.

True enough, which creates the embarrassing perverse incentive for the hypothetical release group to pay with the credentials of the most hapless, sympathetic, ma_and_pa_clueless@AOL.com people they can find, just to see if the rightsholder will take the bait and sue the ostensible leakers...

Fork what? BitTorrent the client? There are already tons of BitTorrent clients. BitTorrent the peer-to-peer sharing protocol? It's already a protocol built mostly out of optional extensions and client-specific additions. BitTorrent the conceptual network in which the protocol operates? The "networks" of different torrents are completely independent except for DHT. There is zero benefit to splitting it up whatsoever.

If the entire encryption mechanism is stored in the 'bundle' it will be cracked.
If the 'bundle' must phone-home to validate payment or something similiar, it will be cracked by the crackers, it will be abandoned by the normal public who don't want to have an 'always on' connection to listen to music.
Back in the early 90's I would download these single level demos of games to 'try'. Looks like we've come full circle.

However it doesn't necessarily matter if its cracked, if the distribution method is easy enough and the content cheap enough (this cuts out a lot of palms) then its likely enough people will just pay for it to make a decent profit. After that, who cares about the deadbeats who share it for free? Its all gravy after that anyway.

I think one thing many don't realize, and some like the RIAA base their entire job on not realizing, is what LL Bean seems to have realized with their return policy: trying to stamp o

Alternately (and more likely), people simply won't bother with these bundles.

In other words, expect to see something like this for all these "bundles" on your favorite torrent site:

HOT TORRENTZ* FOR MADONNA'S NEWEST SONG!!!!Comment 1: Hey, this is just a demo and it asks for money after 1 minute. Anyone know where I can download the full song?Comment 2: yeah, go to http://www.piratestuff.com/torrent1234.html** [piratestuff.com]File size: 12MB Total downloads: 1 Seeds: 37*** Leechers: 0

Meanwhile, the usual torrent of the MP3 or AVI files without the bundled DRM will have thousands of downloads. Why should people waste their time downloading these bundles and then looking for a crack when it's available elsewhere without the hassle?

* purposeful use of "z" to make it seem cool and illegal, just like a real pirated song!** not a real link so don't even bother*** seeders are all the copyright owners wondering why nobody is downloading

Describing the mechanism as a pay-wall probably does the feature a disservice - of course, one way of unlocking is pay, but it is stil possible to view free, and a more useful corollary as demonstrated in the article is that the artist can more effectively drive the user to a retailer of their merchandise (and a preferred one at that), or to their own store.

As usual, persons who specifically do not wish to pay money will not have to, but ensuring a store link for that particular content accompanies the piece in an otherwise free-distribution format

-allows sharers to share, and recipients still have a no-pay way of viewing the material

-enables artists to edge persons amenable to the idea of paying towards a store, removing the requirement of said consumers to proactively locate a retailer

-which subsequently would make the act of sharing a real free-advertising mechanism

This could work really well, so long as sharing gratis and libere is still possible, and if artists using this can provide direct access to the specific item in an international store.

I'd modify you insightful if I hadn't already posted here, that's terribly astute. Ensuring that there's as little barrier as possible between the arrival of a copy of the song, and actually paying for it, is all this needs to do to be a success.

Artists who fear copying need to get over it. They fear the loss of what they shouldn't have at all. The ability to monetize a work by charging for copies was entirely dependent on the primitiveness of our copying methods. When good quality copying was an operation took lots of expensive equipment, material, space, and time, it was possible to regulate it. Now copying takes very little of any of that. There's no turning back the clock.

I consort with artists. I talk with them often. Small fry, who want so desperately to make a living from doing what they love. They fear for their work being lost on the net with no trace back home, and therefore no commissions, and therefore no pay.

I talk to them about Creative Commons. All you need is to submit to advertising and get page views. How many, when anyone can be an artist? Just get a part time job to tide you over. A job to afford making art, that takes so much time away from making art?. It's

We are in a slow transition; but still in the old capitalist model so I'll address it from that perspective:

1) You can't always do what you want. A highly visible and vocal minority says otherwise (plus there is a lot of money to be made from all the attempts people make to join that minority.)

2) Hobby. When did hobbies die? Far fewer people have hobbies today. It is either a career path or nothing - when your hobby becomes an attempt at a career it is no longer a hobby. Many so-called hobbies today are j

1) Indeed you can't just do "what you want" - but when what you do is lauded and desireable, is it really that much to ask to be able to make a living from it? From a zen buddhist perspective, we could also simply do what we do and let people benefit from that without thought of reward, be that making art, tables, or farming the land. It works when everyone is as altruistic and zen-buddhisty - but it doesn't pay bills that are at a baser, more real level than idealism and p

There is a wide range of opinion and only the top few ever get attention anymore. I'm not heavily invested in this topic. I'm not happy with the 1 sided nature of the debate and how over the years the industry is turning Ideas into property; like some big land grab... after the wealthy claimed most everything else they are now taking away ideas... something intangible and more valuable to humanity than money. I'd make a ridiculous claim about religious ideas becoming private property someday...except Sci

3) Art and culture existed since cave paintings. No jobs or copyrights existed. There is zero reason it must exist in a way somebody could subsist upon it. It won't stop. Sure, we will have less bland manufactured pop...

You make the same mistakes they do. I didn't say they shouldn't make a living from art. I said, they shouldn't try to make a living from monetizing copying. It doesn't work. It asks too much of us, that we should honor-- honor, since force does not work-- a system based on artificial scarcity, to the detriment of us all.

Freely. Wihtout agenda. Isn't that the type of art we want to see?... Is that not worth paying artists a living for?

Of course it is. Are they and you totally unable to think of any other way to compensate artists for their efforts? You know, patronage? National Endowment for the Arts? Kickstarter?

I believe artists should be able to monetize the dozens of hours and materials they spend to create a work we can share at the push of a button.

I agree completely. They just need to do it before they distribute the work. Once it's been distributed, short of an (impractical) NDA, it's out of their hands.

I would suggest a Kickstarter campaign. Set a target for public release under an open license, e.g. CC-BY-SA. Offer some bonuses, like signed prints—or whatever is appropriate for your medium—for serious backers. Post some watermarked thumbnail images so people know what they're getting. When and if the target is reached, distribute full-

All of you who are asking how they will stop redistribution of the unlocked content are missing the point entirely. [Many] unauthorized copiers have long been saying that they use bittorrent not because they won't pay, but because it's better. This is an attempt to find out if that is true. The content will wind up on bittorrent networks regardless of how it is distributed, so there is really no drawback. There's no reason why this should fail spectacularly because while this doesn't make it any harder to distribute illicit copies via torrent, it also doesn't actually make it any easier.

Does this bundle format need their client? Is there an embedded scripting engine? (what about security issues?) Is the content encrypted or just blocked? Does it phone-home to unlock? (on every use?) Do you know the price and terms before downloading it, or only after downloading and trying to use it?

I can't find anything on the technology at bittorrent.com or bittorrent.org, either with Google or browsing. I guess this is just another closed-source extension pretending to be "bit-torrent" so they can claim 170 million users.

I was wondering the same thing. If it's some kind of DRM it's going to require its own proprietary player and will fail. If it's just a gentle reminder that, should you feel so inclined, you can buy this piece of music over there it would seem that this could have been solved with a simple ID3 tag.

Really -- who here hasn't torrented something which turned out to be in an encrypted zip file or some such, with a little note that said "Just go to www.imasucker.com" and answer the brief survey to get the password to unlock this file" ?